Cake decorating- any tips for saving money?

[SalmonEile]

My daughter is interested in decorating cakes - just for fun.
I have various cake pans and piping bags/nozzles

But what I’m wondering is does anyone have any cost effective tips or ideas around making butter cream icing? Or something of a similar texture to practice with
it seems to take a bucket load to do a crumb coat, filling and then the actual decoration
I currently only make two cakes a year so I use whatever premade Betty Crocker icing i can get but I don’t know if I can do that for a hobby
is it cheaper to make it from scratch?
or use whipped cream or cream cheese or something else?

Thanks :)

I am trying to learn too so interested in what others will say! I saw on a video that instant mash is supposed to be good and cheap for practicing.

To practice with, you can use mashed potato.
But buttercream - homemade buttercream - is much nicer than the Betty Crocker stuff. It's just butter & icing sugar, sometimes chocolate or vanilla or another flavouring but just plain icing sugar & butter makes great buttercream.